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Mariel Hemingway runs from crazy at Sundance

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Modified: January 22, 2013 at 10:57 am •
Published: January 22, 2013

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PARK CITY, Utah (AP) — Mariel Hemingway says she has left the bad kind of crazy behind, and all that's left is good crazy.

Hemingway came to the Sundance Film Festival for the documentary "Running from Crazy," which chronicles the family history of mental illness that led to the suicides of seven relatives, including sister Margaux and grandfather Ernest Hemingway.

Actress Mariel Hemingway from the film "Running From Crazy" poses for a portrait during the 2013 Sundance Film Festival on Sunday, Jan. 20, 2013 in Park City, Utah. (Photo by Victoria Will/Invision/AP Images)

Directed by Barbara Kopple, with Oprah Winfrey an executive producer, the film features segments with Mariel opening up about how she put her own depression and suicidal thoughts behind her.

"I can honestly say that I do believe that now bad crazy is gone. Good crazy is still around, but I truly am no longer depressed," Hemingway, 51, said in an interview alongside Kopple. "It's gone. I can honestly say that it's been years. I laugh at myself now, which is fun."

Kopple also found a treasure trove of footage from a documentary Margaux was shooting about grandfather Ernest, material that shows the different paths of the two sisters. A supermodel whose acting career fizzled even as Mariel's flourished, Margaux died of a drug overdose in 1996.

"Running from Crazy" explores the bravado of Ernest Hemingway — the boozing, bullfight-loving, womanizing Nobel Prize winning author — and how it concealed a troubled soul. He put a shotgun to his head and killed himself in 1961, a few months before Mariel was born.

The film also reveals a family in denial — Mariel, Margaux and oldest sister Joan, known to the family as Muffet — raised by heavy-drinking parents who had violent fights as the alcohol soaked in and who refused to acknowledge what Mariel calls a family curse of mental illness.

Hemingway shares a touching reunion with Muffet, who was in and out of mental hospitals for years, shows off the rigorous exercise and self-help techniques she has used to overcome depression and reveals dark family secrets, including her belief that her father sexually abused her older sisters.

"What Mariel has, I mean, she's the dream of a documentarian, because you sit at the table with her and talk to her, and everything comes out, because she has a higher purpose for it. She really wants to shed light on suicide and mental illness," said Kopple, a two-time Academy Award winner for the documentaries "Harlan County, U.S.A." and "American Dream."